If Walbridge Mayor Ed Kolanko and David Overholt have their way, a variety of art classes will be offered at the village administration building.

Overholt, a resident of the village, has approached the administration with the idea of using space in the building to teach classes in basic painting, origami, slate painting, air brushing, wood carving and more.

“I want to offer pretty much anything anybody would want to do,” he said. “What I’m trying to do is get a space established where people can come at any time. Another option is to go to different places and teach classes.”

The shooting of a dog in 2014 by an on-duty Woodville police officer tore the community apart, says Mayor Richard Harman, but the weeks and months that followed were a learning experience that opened his eyes to an issue the breadth of which astounded him.

What Harman learned in the aftermath of the shooting he recently shared at a forum hosted by the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. where he and Roy Whitehead, the village police chief, were invited to discuss encounters that police have with dogs with other officers and elected officials from across the country.

Finding time and money to take regular water quality samples in a space as large as Lake Erie’s western basin can be difficult for even the most dedicated researchers.

But sometimes, help shows up on a lab doorstep and is too good to turn away.

That was the case in 2012, when a group of Lake Erie charter boat captains approached the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to ask how they could help monitor and improve water quality in the lake on which their businesses depend. They had seen the impact the severe 2011 harmful algal bloom (HAB) had had on their fishing charters and on other Lake Erie businesses, and wanted to contribute to improving the health of the lake.

While current efforts to curtail agricultural runoff will improve the health of Lake Erie, much more work will be needed to protect the streams that feed the lake, new research shows.

A study of the western Lake Erie watershed found that increased conservation efforts will be needed on most of the farms in the watershed in order to protect arterial streams in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana.

The project, led by researchers at The Ohio State University and The Nature Conservancy, used computer modeling to get a handle on the impact of various conservation efforts in the western Lake Erie watershed. The area includes about 5.5 million acres of cropland, making it the most intensely farmed watershed feeding into the Great Lakes.

Oregon City Council on Monday approved an agreement with Tetra Tech, Inc., Toledo, to provide professional engineering services for the design of the old Millard Bridge replacement project over Otter Creek for $139,600.

Public Service Director Paul Roman said the older bridge is much lower in elevation just off Otter Creek Road, but is still used.

“There are a couple of properties that use it. We are obligated to keep the bridge open. We have used this bridge as a secondary route for superloads going to BP-Husky and so on. Certainly, we need to replace it. We do want to build it for superloads,” he said.

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